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Fantastic!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is definitely an unconventional narrative about group of people in small town in Alaska. The writer/director John Sayles wanted to make an unconventional movie that plays with audience expectations . When there is a shotgun hanging on the wall the audience should expect that it will be used in the movie – that's how most movies work. The writers write movies as a mathematical calculation where 2 plus 2 gives 4 . They want to capture life in their movies , but often the shape their own reality based on logic with moral in the end. After watching many movies audience can have certain expectations about where the story is going, what will happen , what could happen and what will be the message.Styles here tries to imitate life as much as it's possible. In the first half of movie we are introduced to characters that don't really play any important part in the second half – the lesbian couple , frustrated fisherman , jolly bartender. In fact "Limbo" is basically two movies in one , similar to "Full metal jacket". The first hour is a movie about people of small town , while the second hour pretends to be a thriller about three people. Calling this movie a "thriller" is a bit misleading , it's certainly no "Deliverance". The acting is fine . Vanessa Martinez is believable as angry teenager , David Strathairn is effectively playing troubled, but good hearted handy-man . Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is lovely as singer who can't settle with her life. There is some nice fun dialogue here and the movie is quite beautifully photographed."Limbo" doesn't work either as thriller or drama . The thriller elements are few and badly done . There is a lot of potential drama here : troubled past of Joe , the love triangle , the mother-daughter relationship. The problem is that everything is done with sensibility of soap opera . I'm sorry , but I wasn't move by anything here. The movie is too slow in some places. There is also an irritating amount of small talk that leads nowhere. And why waste your time of showing characters in the first half of the movie when they don't play any part in the second half . Kris Kristofferson is supposed to be an important character , yet his completely bland.The biggest problem however is the ending . I don't mind open endings that allow the audience to use imagination and decide what happened in the end – "Mechanic" , "Inception", "The Killing of Chinese bookie" and few others. The fans of Sayles say that it was the only way to end the movie and there is some merit in their arguments . However , Sayles himself admitted that he didn't knew how to end the movie and the ending is the result of that . It feels like the movie misses a reel. In my opinion it's awful ending."Limbo" is kinda interesting experiment , but after two viewings I still think it's an ambitious failure. I give it 3/10.

Before 1999 John Sayles had already brought himself into fame as one of the biggest names in Independent filmmaking. He has found his niche in writing for the screen and directing, yet he receives mediocre attention to what density his films carry. My all-time favorite film, Matewan (1987), is also by Sayles, and in Limbo, he has done something incredible bringing us a true-to-heart narrative in a small Alaskan town. From the first moments of picture; of salmon restlessly waiting to find a place to go, until the heart-throbbing and hard-hitting ending we examine sub texts between the characters and their past. While the beginning may take a bit to set up shop on where Sayles exactly plans to take us, he does it methodically weaving dialog in and out of shots; interlocking sentence after sentence between different characters while at the same time making a point. The Alaskan wilderness is a perfect setting because nature is unpredictable and Juneau (among other places) is one of the few areas in which all roads lead to virtually nowhere. Meanwhile, Sayles is just prepping us to realize we too as viewers of this narrative, are in Limbo. David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Vanessa Martinez deliver wonderful performances that from the beginning reveal their character's interesting pasts. Strathairn seems lost ever since a boating accident that took two friends, and has never gone fishing since while Mastrantonio is a club singer constantly on the move to find a living and a place to keep her and her daughter happy. And finally Martinez is the confused teenager also lost for who she may be and where she belongs. She has a drifting relationship with her mother (Mastrantonio) and finds comfort when talking to Strathairn's character at work. When the three are kept on an Alaskan island with nothing but the clothes on their back, a new element is subtly brought in when Martinez finds a long lost diary of a stranger. She begins reading passages by night as we delve into another world; a lost perspective that is incredibly poetic and raw with emotion.As the backdrop strengthens we are soon deep into Sayles' fantastically created narrative. We think we know where the story is going, but right when you think you know the answer Sayles takes us in the complete opposite direction. It is unconventional storytelling and a film that brings us one of the greatest endings in cinema history.

God love and protect John Sayles. Not because he hits every ball out of the park, because he clearly doesn't; but because he never lets his few strikeouts compel him to try to hit a five-run homer the next time out. In an era marked by increasingly degraded and degrading notions of "entertainment" and "storytelling" - for pity's sake, as I write this, grown adults are waxing rhapsodic over a movie about a costumed billionaire-vigilante (!!) - Sayles understands that great drama is about the people we meet every day; the places we live in and how they shape us; the things that change, and the things that remain; and above all, about the human heart in conflict with itself. In LIMBO, he takes risks with his zig-zagging narrative most filmmakers simply aren't capable of, and reaps rewards of such profundity, and richness of feeling, that most audiences are too conditioned by junk-culture to recognize, let alone appreciate them. Some viewers have felt betrayed by LIMBO's seismic shifts in tone and direction, and the elliptical ending, but even that sense of betrayal speaks to how utterly absorbing and moving his handling of his Alaska-set story is, and how unblinking his observations of his characters. (You can only feel "betrayed" if you're deeply invested in the story that's been presented, after all.) Sayles' screenplay, like his direction, is so completely free of artifice as to seem transparent - his "heroes" and "villains" are separated only by their degrees of vulnerability and weakness under pressure - and his small cast of actors are working at the height of their gifts. David Straithairn, always underrated, has never been better, and young Vanessa Martinez is a quiet revelation. You won't forget these characters, or this movie, regardless of how the ending affects you. And though you hate to jinx his thus-far phenomenal career with red-carpet hullabaloo, maybe it's time to make it official and coronate John Sayles as the greatest moviemaker of our time. He may not need or want the crown, but Hollywood certainly needs to made to cry uncle and acknowledge it.

I'd suggest that viewers watch 'Limbo' on DVD with the voice-over narrative by John Sayles, the director. A lot of insights provided there, including a lot of little details which give you insight into movie-making--the reason for multiple takes, visual effects, the importance of 'continuity', and even a lot about sound, which was a big issue in the making of this film.I was amazed to learn that Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is such a terrific singer--she sang all the songs and, in fact, her voice was recorded live while shooting the scenes, not dubbed in later in post-production. Sayles describes this in his narrative.Sayles had less to say in the narrative about the ending, but based on the comments he DID make it was all quite intentional--not the result of studio politics or a screenwriter (Sayles himself) who couldn't decide on a final ending. In fact, I would suggest that it is Sayles' standing in the business that permitted this film to be produced & released without answering the question of what becomes of those characters, though it also occurs to me that it could be the reason why this film didn't get much of a marketing push. Clearly the audience is left hanging in--dare I say it--a state of limbo. Sayles has no intention, based on his comments, of a sequel, though he invites anyone else to dream one up if they wish.But aside from all this, it was a terrific film, with interesting characters, shot in unusual and often stunning locations ("Insomnia" comes to mind when thinking of recent films shot in Alaska with its scenic backdrops).The cast was generally quite good--Mastrantonio and Strathairn were terrific, and Kris Kristofferson was a great choice as the likable but edgy local, Smilin' Jack Johannson. Vanessa Martinez was, for me, less convincing as the daughter until the boat trip and beyond, but that is when her character becomes truly important to the story and her work was quite good when it mattered most; up to then it was all teenage angst.Overall, I enjoyed 'Limbo' a great deal, and the limbo in which the audience is left with such abruptness was, for me, almost a slap in the face--a welcome one--in striking contrast to the 'Star Wars' series in which George Lucas took 6 movies and nearly 30 years to tell us how Darth Vader came to be.Note: I am NOT slamming Lucas or 'Star Wars' by that comment, only making a point.